Epilogue 3 Dagan
I am Dagan.
Lord of Earth.
Winged Demon of stone and storm.
Breaker of bones. Keeper of roots.
That is what they call me, at least.
Tonight I am just a man standing on the edge of Thorne’s great hall, spine pressed to cold stone, a tankard of ale in my hand as I watch my brothers with their mates.
Alaric leans down to murmur something into Jules’ ear. She laughs, one hand on the swell of her stomach, the other tugging playfully on his hair.
Kael sits with Phoebe tucked into his side, her fingers stained with ink even now as she sketches on a scrap of parchment, his thumb stroking mindlessly over the back of her hand.
And Thorne—Thorne is smiling.
Truly smiling, not the sharp, bitter curve of his mouth I had grown used to over centuries. Delia is at his side, head tipped back as she laughs at something Evonne says, her brilliant white gown catching the light. His arm is looped around her waist, careless and claiming.
Their bonds shine to my eyes—literally.
I see them as threads of light, rooted deep in each Lord’s chest, twining out and into their viyellas. Fire-gold for Thorne. Bright storm-silver for Alaric. Tidal blue-shot-with-starlight for Kael.
All of them bright. All of them steady, humming with power and trust and something that makes my teeth ache.
Love.
The one thing this realm has never promised me.
I take a slow drink, letting the burn of Thorne’s ember-ale cut through the heaviness in my chest. The hall is loud—music, laughter, the clatter of plates and chairs—but underneath it all, I hear the deeper sounds.
The soft shift of stone in the castle walls as Ashfell adjusts to the weight of so many bodies.
The low, earth-deep thrum from far below where The Ember Vein pulses, stabilizing again after the SoulTakers’ assault.
The distant grind of mountains turning in their sleep.
Nightfall hums through my bones.
The war is not over.
Idris is not finished.
The rot he has sown has not yet been carved out.
I know this the way I know when a quake is coming—long before the first tremor, when the rock itself begins to hold its breath.
“What’s going on in your thunderhead?”
Thorne’s voice comes from my right. I didn’t hear him approach, which irritates me.
I turn my head slowly. He stands there with a plate piled high with roasted meat and ember bread, Delia back with the healers.
His eyes are bright, mouth curved in a smirk that does not quite hide the concern beneath.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Bullshit,” Kael says easily, appearing on my left like they planned it. He has a goblet of sea-wine in hand and the look of a man who is both content and endlessly nosy. “You’re rumbling loud enough to shake the rafters.”
I glance up.
The rafters are, in fact, shaking.
I exhale and let the earth settle.
“Better?” I ask dryly.
“For the structure? Yes,” Alaric says as he joins us, folding his arms across his chest. His silver eyes are sharp. “For you? Not so certain.”
I narrow my gaze. “I am fine.”
“You’re brooding,” Kael says.
“I always brood.”
“You’re brooding more than usual,” Thorne points out. “Usually you just glower quietly and drink. Tonight you look like you want to punch the Gemini moon itself.”
I grunt.
Because they are not wrong.
I look past them to the high table again, to where Jules and Phoebe are talking with Delia, heads bent together, hands moving as they speak.
Three women from the same distant realm, from the same small swath of land in that realm, all now bound to the Lords of Nightfall.
All of them glowing with that damned light I cannot stop seeing.
“I watch my brothers embrace their viyellas,” I say finally. “I can see the bonds in each of you. Obvious. Strong.” I lift my tankard slightly in their direction. “And yet, I walk alone. Still.”
Alaric’s expression softens. I hate it.
“This fight is done, Dagan,” he says. “For now. The Vein stands. The wards hold.”
“For now,” I echo. “Idris is not finished. His cult grows in the cracks while we celebrate.”
“Which is exactly why we celebrate,” Kael counters. “If we wait to be safe, we’ll never raise a cup again.”
Thorne tilts his head, studying me. “This is deeper than Idris.”
I laugh, a short, bitter sound. “Is it?”
“Yes,” Alaric says, maddeningly sure. “I recognize the look. It is the same one that haunted my reflection before I met Jules. Before Phoebe dragged Kael out of drowning himself in duty. Before Delia forced you to admit you have a heart at all, Thorne.”
Thorne grunts. “She did not force—”
“Please,” Kael and I say at the same time, and for a moment the mood lightens.
“Have you thought about New Jersey?” Kael asks suddenly.
I blink. “What?”
He grins like a man enjoying a private joke. “Have you thought about trying New Jersey? It has been… fruitful for the rest of us.”
Alaric’s mouth twitches. “Might be worth a try.”
I stare at them.
“I fail to see how one physical destination is the only place in the multiverse where our Fates deign to hide our mates,” I scoff. “You speak of this Jersey as if it provides viyellas on tap.”
Thorne snorts into his drink.
“Still,” Kael says, undeterred, “the pattern is hard to ignore.”
“Jules, Phoebe, and Delia all came from the same region,” Alaric muses. “Same realm. Same rough patch of coastline in that realm. There may be some… sympathetic resonance. Some thin place between Nightfall and that land.”
“Or,” I say dryly, “perhaps the Fates merely enjoy tormenting me by implying my future might be found in a place whose name sounds like an illness.”
“Rude,” Thorne mutters. “You haven’t even been. You went far south, then east, yes?”
I nod reluctantly. “I have crossed deserts of glass and jungles that stank of rot. I have met priestesses with eyes like poison and kings who thought themselves gods. None of them… sang. None of them fit.”
“And in all that wandering, you never thought ‘perhaps I should try this Jersey’?” Kael presses, eyes dancing.
“No,” I say flatly.
Alaric’s lips quirk. “Perhaps that is your problem.”
I roll my eyes and take another drink. The ale does not warm me the way it usually does. The hollowness inside my chest remains.
Once, I was closest to the Prime.
Once, his hand rested on my shoulder as we stood at the edge of The Ember Vein and he spoke of balance, of duty, of the weight of all worlds resting on the fragile scaffolding of dreams.
He fell.
The crown went silent.
Trust fractured.
I have held these lands together with stone and blood and will alone since that day. I have buried too many farmers and river-wardens, too many children crushed beneath rock or torn apart by SoulTakers lured to the scent of despair.
Love was not meant for me.
Not in this life.
Not while the realm’s bones still ache.
And yet, the sight of my brothers with their mates twists something in me I do not wish to name.
Hope.
I hate it.
“Listen to me,” Alaric says quietly, stepping closer so others cannot overhear. The great hall churns around us, but here in this little knot of power it feels almost still. “We are not saying the Fates owe you a viyella because we have ours.”
“They do,” Kael mutters.
“Shut up,” Alaric says mildly. He fixes his gaze on me again. “We are saying you deserve the chance to look without turning to stone before you even begin.”
Thorne nods. “We are saying that we are with you. Whatever you decide.”
For all my scoffing, for all my armor of sarcasm and granite, those words land with more force than any blow.
You are not alone, Thorne, Alaric told him earlier.
You always have us, brother.
And me.
Delia’s words echo, Especially me.
I have always understood the earth.
I have always known how to move stone, how to coax seeds from cracked ground, how to channel lightning through my wings and into enemies’ skulls.
I have never understood this.
“Fine,” I say at last, the word dragged from me like ore from rock. “I will consider this… Jersey.”
“New Jersey,” Thorne corrects.
“Yes, yes, New Jersey,” I mutter.
Kael grins like a man who believes he has bent a mountain.
Alaric claps me on the shoulder, satisfaction in his eyes. “That is all we ask.”
“I said consider,” I warn.
Thorne’s gaze goes distant for a moment, as if he’s hearing Delia’s voice in his head. Then he smirks. “If you do go, prepare yourself. They have something called traffic. And bagels. The bagels are worth the traffic.”
“I do not know what either of those things are,” I say.
“You will,” he replies.
The idea lodges in my mind like a pebble in a streambed—not large, but persistent. The kind that catches other bits of debris and slowly builds a dam.
New Jersey.
A realm of salt and steel and bright, stubborn mortals who shout at one another in crowded streets and still manage to send their bravest into burning buildings.
A realm that has already given Nightfall three viyellas who have changed everything.
I look once more at the bonds shining between my brothers and their mates, at the way the light threads through them, down, down, into the bones of the realm itself.
The crown is still silent.
The SoulTakers still gather in the cracks.
The war is not done.
But perhaps…
Perhaps there is still room in all this ruin for one more miracle.
“Do not get your hopes up,” I tell my own treacherous heart, setting my tankard aside. “We go to strengthen the wards in the morning.”
“After that?” Kael asks.
I roll my shoulders, wings flexing slightly beneath my cloak. The stone under my boots hums with anticipation I refuse to acknowledge.
“After that,” I say slowly, “I might look at a map.”
Alaric grins. “I have one labeled Earth Realm Eastern Seaboard.”
“Of course you do,” I mutter.
Thorne lifts his goblet toward me in silent toast. “To Dagan. May his thunderhead finally find a place to strike.”
I snort.
But I raise my own cup.
“To Nightfall,” I say. “To the Vein. To the worlds we keep from breaking.”
I pause.
The words taste odd as I add the last.
“And… to Jersey,” I say grudgingly.
Kael whoops. Alaric laughs. Thorne nearly chokes on his drink.
Above us, the stone ceiling gives a soft, approving rumble.
The earth likes the idea.
I pretend I do not.
But later, when the hall has emptied and the Great Flame burns low, I stand alone on one of Ashfell’s outer battlements, wings spread wide, Gemini moonlight washing over black feathers.
I stare out toward the distant horizon, where worlds blur and realms bleed into one another, and I make a quiet vow the earth itself bears witness to:
I will not let Idris unmake what we have bled to protect.
And if, along the way, there is a mortal somewhere in that noisy, stubborn place called New Jersey whose soul calls to mine—then may the Fates be ready.
Because when I find her, I will not let go.
The end…